Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--And More Miserable Than Ever Before

327 Pages·2006·3.98 MB·English

by  Jean M. Twenge

Praise for Generation Me
“Those vague hunches we have about this generation—Twenge does a huge,
decidedly un-GenX amount of research and replaces them with actual data. Her
writing is lucid and entertaining, and she’s unafraid to draw bold conclusions
when necessary. It’s nothing new for a generation to be misunderstood by
popular and commercial culture, but the one she describes has been misdrawn to
the point of absurdity; refreshing, then, to have someone swap those persistent
old myths for thoughtful, careful observations.”
—Chris Colin, author of What Really Happened to the Class of ’93: Start-Ups, Dropouts, and
Other Navigations through an Untidy Decade
“Jean Twenge is not only dedicated as a researcher and social scientist, but she is
clearly passionate about it. In this forward-thinking and clear-eyed book, she
immediately stands out as a social critic of substance, in a world of dogmatic and
chattering media pundits who are only guessing when they are “covering” major
social trends and generational changes.”
—Paula Kamen, author of Feminist Fatale and Her Way: Young Women Remake the Sexual
Revolution
“Everyone knows that American society is changing, but no one until now has
documented how the people themselves are changing. In this startling, witty,
and refreshing book, a pioneering researcher explains how the very personality
of the average American is different. An upbringing that featured forming
rather than meeting high expectations, and feeling good before doing good, has
resulted in a generation with the highest self-esteem on record—and the highest
rates of depression. Based on careful, groundbreaking research but filled with
touching and amusing stories, this book explains exactly how the American
character is changing and evolving, sometimes for the better, sometimes not.
Americans should read this book and ponder whether we should raise the next
generation on unrealistic hopes, undisciplined self-assertion, and endless,
baseless self-congratulation.”
—Roy F. Baumeister, author of The Cultural Animal: Human Nature, Meaning, and Social Life,
and Eppes Eminent Professor of Psychology, Florida State University
“Dr. Jean Twenge provides an insightful analysis of the young adults she labels
‘GenMe’—their supreme self-confidence in their own worth, their concern with
doing things ‘their way,’ and the benefits and costs that come from their focus
on themselves. Twenge draws upon her outstanding research to describe
generational differences and their sources, lending an authority to her analysis
that few previous commentators on GenMe have enjoyed.”
—Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, PhD, Yale University professor and author of Women Who Think
Too Much
“Jean Twenge has the intelligence and courage to voice a concern that is in the
minds of all today’s parents. If you want your child to succeed in today’s world,
read this book.”
—Mona Lisa Schulz, MD, PhD, author of The New Feminine Brain
“Twenge’s book is comprehensive . . . filled with statistics and thoughtful
observations about the group she’s dubbed Generation Me . . . accessible and a
must-read.”
—Booklist
“[The] book is livened with analysis of films, magazines and TV shows, and with
anecdotal stories from her life and others’. The real basis of her argument,
however, lies in her 14 years of research comparing the results of personality
tests given to boomers when they were under 30 and those given to GenMe’ers
today. . . . Many of her findings are fascinating. And her call to “ditch the self-
esteem movement” in favor of education programs that encourage empathy and
real accomplishment could spare some Me’ers from the depression that often
occurs when they hit the realities of today’s increasingly competitive
workplace.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Twenge tells an engaging story, fueled and supported by a solid base of data,
illustrative quotes from her and others’ research, and barometric examples from
TV shows, movies, comics, and advertisements. . . . Throughout the book, her
analyses of myriad topics articulated a number of ideas on the tip of my mind’s
tongue.”
—AARP the Magazine
“This book should be required reading for parents-to-be.”
—The Washington Post
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Contents
Preface to the Revised Edition
Introduction
1. You Don’t Need Their Approval: The Decline of Social Rules
2. An Army of One: Me
3. You Can Be Anything You Want to Be
4. The Age of Anxiety (and Depression, and Loneliness): Generation Stressed
5. Yeah, Right: The Belief That There’s No Point in Trying
6. Sex: Generation Prude Meets Generation Crude
7. The Equality Revolution: Minorities, Women, and Gays and Lesbians
8. Generation Me at Work
9. What Do We Do Now?
Appendix
Acknowledgments
About Jean M. Twenge
Notes
Index
To Craig, for my family
Preface to the Revised Edition
Y
oung people are angry.
Told they could be anything they wanted to be, they face widespread
unemployment. Raised on dreams of material wealth, more than a third live
with their parents well into their 20s. No one told them it would be this hard,
they say, and older generations don’t understand how difficult it is to find a job,
cover the rent, and pay off their huge student loans. Young people are told to
“pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” observed Tiffany Vang, 23, in the Twin
Cities Daily Planet. “But we’re not even wearing the same shoes anymore; we’re
given high heels to race in this catch-22 marathon. It’s become a rite of passage
for people my age to work for free even after college.” It bothers her, she says,
when someone tells a young person, “You will be fine.” Because what if she’s
not?
“We are said to be entitled,” writes cartoonist Matt Bors, 30, on cnn.com.
“We think we deserve something, that the world should hand us something for
being here. We do. Like jobs . . . because student loans can’t be paid off with
air.” He concludes, “Stop hating on Millennials. We didn’t create this mess. We
came late to the banquet and were served up crumbs. Which we will Instagram
before we eat. #YUM.”
A lot has changed since the first edition of Generation Me was published in
April 2006. At the time, the economy was doing well. Even so, I predicted that
this generation would find the transition to adulthood difficult: After a
childhood of optimism and high expectations, reality hit them like a smack in
the face. That became even more true when the Great Recession hit in 2007.
Technology has also fundamentally changed our world and this generation in
particular. Back in 2006, only college students could get a Facebook account.
YouTube had premiered just a year before, Twitter went online a few months
later, and the iPhone debuted soon after. The generational conversation is also
very different. In 2006, the generation born after 1980—variously called GenY
or Millennials—was rarely discussed, outside of a book declaring them “the next
Greatest Generation,” a few articles praising their high school community
service, and—paradoxically—other articles describing them as “brash” and
“entitled.”
Things are different now. We take smartphones, social networking, and
streaming video for granted. Gay marriage is legal and a black man has been
elected president—twice. Millennials—the common label for the group I call
Generation Me—are now endlessly dissected. At least 10 books advise managers
on how to work with them. HBO’s Girls depicts their struggles to reach
independent adulthood, and Glee highlights their yearning for fame and
tolerance for diversity. Time magazine, which featured Baby Boomers and
Generation X on covers when their inaugural members were still in their 20s,
finally published a cover article on Millennials in May 2013 when its oldest
members were 31—seven years after Generation Me appeared. It was titled “The
Me Me Me Generation.”
The article spawned a huge reaction, from parody covers to opinion pieces.
In the comments, the blog posts, and the videos, the emotion nearly leaps off
the computer screen. One video featured a group of GenMe’ers mock-
apologizing, saying, “You raised us to believe that we were special—so special we
didn’t have to do anything to earn it. . . . We’re really sorry we suck so much.”
But, they say, it’s the Boomers’ fault, not theirs: “It’s not like we jacked up
college tuition prices, destroyed the manufacturing industry, started two
quagmire wars, gutted the unions, destroyed the global economy, or left our
offspring with an environmentally devastated planet. . . . It would be crazy if
there were a generation that recklessly awful, huh?” GenMe’s other responses to
the article varied from “Yes, but we actually are awesome” to “But older
generations have always said younger generations were more self-centered.”
But is this generation more self-centered than previous generations were at
the same age? And what other characteristics define them? We now know. The
first edition of Generation Me featured 14 studies on generational differences,
based on data from 1.2 million people. In the years since, my coauthors and I
have published 19 additional studies based on the responses of 11 million
people. Most of these new studies draw from large, nationally representative
surveys (including of high school students), providing a view of the entire
generation, not just one selected segment. These findings, along with those from
other researchers, are featured here for the first time. This is the main difference
you will notice in this revised edition: much more data. These data capture the
opinions and self-views of young people—not what older generations are saying